Melanie Jame Wolf: The Creep – Sophiensæle | Independent Theater in Berlin
Melanie Jame Wolf:
The Creep
To creep is to move quietly, with stealth, to avoid detection. A creep is a person who produces feelings of discomfort and fear in others. Creeps creep. Their violence is experienced as affect – felt rather than seen – it is hard to quantify and therefore hard to prove, sometimes even hard to believe. People creep. So can institutions. Time creeps. So can pleasure.
The Creep at feldfünf is the first in a series of installations by Berlin based choreographer and visual artist, Melanie Jame Wolf, in which she will enact her ongoing creep studies. It is a choreography between 2 figures - a cowboy and a mountain – embodying a poetic meditation on violence and storytelling. Departing from Walter Benjamin's concept of 'mythic violence' - in which fascist power and authority are accumulated by performing itself as ancient truth – The Creep studies the invisible and the insidious; forced silences, double meanings, and omissions; the weird and the eerie.
The installation continues Wolf's formal exploration of the expanded choreographic possibilities of fabric, video and printed text, whilst introducing new sculptural developments in her practice. It will be activated with two episodes of live performance across the opening weekend of the exhibition.
Concept, direction, text, installation, performance Melanie Jame Wolf Sound design Mars Dietz Costume design Nicolas Navarro Rueda Visual dramaturgy Yoav Admoni
Performance dramaturgy Louise Trueheart Cinematography Ashton Green Graphic design Sam Smith
A production of Melanie Jame Wolf in co-production with SOPHIENSÆLE. Supported by the NATIONAL PERFORMANCE NETWORK - STEPPING OUT, funded by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media as part of the NEUSTART KULTUR. Hilfsprogramm Tanz.
Melanie Jame Wolf makes artworks, performances, and texts about power, persona and the phenomenon of “show business”: the liminal, the persuasive, the deceptive, the staged, and the performed in the political, theatrical and everyday. Her work explores the vulnerability of the live moment and the body as an unruly political riddle. These investigations are expressed through shape-shifting and play with language in surprising and humorous ways.
Spaces that have presented her work include Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Kunstmuseum Basel – Gegenwart, KW – Institute of Contemporary Art, HAU – Hebbel am Ufer, Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art, nGbK, The National 2019: New Australian Art biennial, VAEFF – Film Festival NYC, Arts Santa Monica, Schwules Museum, Sophiensæle, Münchner Kammerspiele, Arts House Melbourne, Kasseler Dokfest, Bärenzwinger Berlin, SOPHIE TAPPEINER and Institute of Modern Art Brisbane. Wolf was one of 8 nominees for the 2022 Berlin Art Prize.